Orographic SE's that drop things

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Description: Strong orographic SE's can be something to dread where I live. We often get dry, cold E for weeks and they give me headaches and aching sinuses, they do a lot of people here. The SE's are worse still. They can send funnel clouds and if they go out to sea, waterspouts, although these are common enough here, the don't often come onto land. We get whirlwinds via Transmission Gully and the farmer tells me that tornadoes along the hill tops and down through the gully are fairly common. He tells me that they are big rotating things that lie on their sides, spinning. I haven't been game to go up the gully during an SE, as pretty nasty wind comes blasting out of there, turns around and heads south into Paekakariki village. Occasionally they lift roofs here or cause other property damage. Sheep on the Paek Hill Road can also be picked up from hilltops by rotating clouds and dropped into gullies, hence you see dead sheep at gully bottoms up there. There is a wide gully just before the lookout where you often see dead sheep at the bottom by the road, there are two there at present. Locally these big down drafts are known as E/SE whirlwinds. On the seafront it can be a raging NW, while where I am parallel to the railway line, they often mix with the E/SE, depending on what is growing up on the hills and the wind just blasts from all over the place. LOL, in summer-autumn, it is the NW that is the enemy, as they tend to dump so much rain on us during the upward climb, if there isn't a lot of wind to them; the complete opposite! I love NW-W during winter/spring as they provide much relief from the very dry, freezing cold orographic winds, aching heads and bad moods. LOL!

Anyway, this picture is of a waterspout forming just off shore several years back; powerful orographic SE over water was the culprit. It was taken by Jenny Twist from Paraparaumu. It came through us, dumping a mass downpour like a giant bucket of water, followed by hail and extremely high winds, taking a few of my plants with it. Not the first time!

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Posted by: cupoteacoast